


Cellar Talk

by Singofsolace



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Cardassia, Gen, Occupation of Bajor, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-10 19:07:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8929810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Singofsolace/pseuds/Singofsolace
Summary: Kira wakes up from an intense nightmare to find two Cardassians staring down at her in a cellar. Takes place right before the deleted scene in which Kira, Garak, and Damar supposedly got drunk together. This is my Star Trek Secret Santa gift for kikidiesunddas! I hope you like it!





	

_“Run!” Lupaza shouts above the chaos of phaser-fire and screams. Someone—it might be Lupaza, but her voice sounded too far away for it to have been her—pushes Kira forward with the strength of someone twice her size. Furel? Shakaar? No, it can’t be Shakaar—he was captured hours ago. There is smoke, and flashes of light, and Kira suddenly can’t breathe. She’s running for her life, grateful for her still-beating heart, and yet, she would so much rather turn and fight. She can hear the harsh voices of Cardassian soldiers behind her, and realizes that she may be the only one who will make it out of this alive._

_When Kira hears Lupaza’s first scream, she falters, but she forces her legs to keep going. When a chorus of laughter follows the second scream, her limbs go numb. Her heart stops. Blood rushes to her head, and her stomach rolls. She can’t push herself to keep going. Steeling herself, she turns, trying to pinpoint Lupaza’s location._

_A third scream, followed by hoots and cheers, helps her and haunts her simultaneously._

_“Take that, Bajoran scum!”_

_Kira’s lungs protest as she moves in the direction of the soldiers. She takes her small phaser pistol into her hand, debating the wisdom of attacking at least three Cardassian soldiers without backup. But just then, Lupaza’s fiery red hair comes into her vision. She is struggling against the Cardassian soldier who has pinned her down with his significantly heavier bodyweight. Kira does not even think before she lifts her pistol and fires. The Cardassian’s vile body slumps over her friend, and she only has the chance to connect eyes with Lupaza for a moment before she is set upon by the other two._

_Kira will never forget the look in her friend’s eyes as she is thrown to the ground beside her. They say, in the loudest silence Kira has ever heard, “Why didn’t you run?” When the pain starts, Kira does not recognize the cry that ricochets through the trees as her own. She keeps Lupaza’s gaze, and has an intense, peculiar desire to wipe the blood off her friend’s face, if only she could move her hand. It’s only when she can feel her ribs shattering under a Cardassian’s boot that she closes her eyes and allows herself to scream._

* * *

 

Garak is a light sleeper at the best of times. Being a former member of the Obsidian Order, and current tinker-tailor-outcast-spy, he has trained himself to wake at the slightest provocation. Living on a space station with innumerable strange sounds to be heard in the middle of the night, this has posed a problem for him. But when he is woken by a muffled cry echoing throughout the cellar, he does not mind being a light sleeper. He shakes himself to full awareness, and slowly slinks out of bed to check on his unlikely comrade-in-arms.

Kira lies in her own cot, curled into herself, as though she wishes to disappear altogether. As Garak comes closer, she thrashes against her flimsy blanket and lets loose a scream that could rattle the bones of the most battle-worn warrior. Making a decision that he knows may cost him his life—or at least some degree of physical injury—he attempts to wake Kira up from her nightmare before she alerts the whole Cardassian army of their presence.

“Kira! Kira, wake up!” Garak takes hold of the woman’s flailing arms, so that he is not hit in the process of waking her up. This only intensifies her distress, and the scream that follows is even louder and more pained than the first.

“Kira! Garak? What’s wrong?” Damar has apparently awoken as well. Garak would expect no less, when Kira is single-handedly attempting to wake the dead.

“She’ll get us all killed!” says Damar, and he moves to clap his hand over her mouth.

“I don’t think—” Garak begins to say, but his sentence is made irrelevant as Kira awakens from her nightmare, fists and legs flailing. Garak can tell from the look in her eyes that she does not recognize Damar, who is standing over her with his hand over her mouth. She bites into it, hard, and Damar reels back, hissing curses.

Garak, who has very little sympathy for his fellow Cardassian, attempts to calm her now that she is awake.

“Kira? Kira Nerys!” He says her name with extra emphasis on her given one, hoping it will knock her into their reality, but she only looks at him, pupils blown wide, a snarl in her lips.

“Let me go!” Kira spits, attempting to wrench her wrists free from his grasp. He does not want to forcibly overpower her, but Kira could kill him with her pinky if she really had a mind to do it, and he doesn’t trust her not to, in her current state.

“Kira Nerys, do you know where you are?”

Her breathing is labored as she takes in Garak’s features, and then attempts to locate Damar. She does not answer the question, but at least she seems to be calming down.

“You’re on Cardassia. In a cellar,” Damar provides, extremely unhelpfully.

Kira’s breathing quickens, and Garak can tell she is planning her attack even as he maintains his firm hold on her. He admires her determination to fight despite the odds never being in her favor.

“The year is 2375. The Occupation is over,” says Garak, rather insistently. 

Kira curses at him in Bajoran. Garak smiles.

“Damar, turn on a light, will you?”

Damar begrudgingly moves to fulfill the request. Garak makes sure to keep his eyes locked on Kira. If he loses concentration for even a moment, it is more than likely that she will take advantage of his distraction and kill them both before Mila even has a chance to—

“Is everything all right down there?”

Garak inwardly groans. The light comes on and he suspects he will never hear the end of it, where Mila is concerned. She comes down the stairs, quite shocked to find Garak leaning over the Bajoran woman, pinning her wrists to the cot on either side of her head.

“Fine, Mila. Kira had a rather violent nightmare, that’s all.”

Slowly, he can feel the Colonel returning to herself. Her eyes are no longer cloudy and wild. He does not immediately release her when he feels her body relax slightly, but instead speaks to Mila.

“Do you have some kanar, Mila? Or some springwine?”

It is clear the older woman does not wish to go. Kira is the one to break the silence.

“I’m all right, Mila. You can let go now, Garak, before I punch you in the face.” Kira’s voice is hoarse from screaming, but he can tell she knows where she is now. He lets her go, and he can feel rather than see her relief. It comes off her in waves.

“I’ll get some kanar—it’s all we have, I’m afraid.” With that, Mila climbs the stairs, though she shoots Damar a look before she turns away.

“I’m sorry,” Kira says, rubbing her face with her hands.

Damar attempts to respond, but Garak silences him with a sharp look.

“We all have nightmares,” Garak assures, and Damar looks away, uncomfortably.

“Not like mine,” she says, and the former member of the Obsidian Order has to admit, she has him there.

“No harm done,” says Damar, much more conciliatory now as Mila returns with several bottles of kanar.

“Let’s have a drink, shall we?” suggests Garak, and if Kira’s hands shake as she takes the proffered bottle, he makes a point not to notice.

She takes a long swig, almost choking as the taste of it and the burn of the alcohol hits the back of her throat. She passes it pointedly back to Garak, though Damar goes to take it from her hand.

“I thought you had given it up, Damar?” she says, almost playfully, but there is a darkness to her now that she can’t seem to shake in the wake of her dream.

“What is the phrase? The love of alcohol is ‘A good man’s failing?’” Damar takes the bottle after Garak has had a good long drink.

Kira laughs. It is a hollow, chilling sound. “That’s a human phrase. You’re a Cardassian.”

“How good of you to notice.” When Garak shoots him a glare, Damar immediately regrets the jab, but Kira just shakes her head.

“I’ve always noticed.” The room goes quiet for a bit.

The three residents of the cellar pass the bottle back and forth until it is gone, and then move on to the next, and then the next.

By the third bottle, Kira’s eyes are unnaturally bright, and her laugh is just a bit too loud, but Garak much prefers this Kira to the one screaming at phantoms. They tell bad jokes and old stories for hours until finally, they all collapse onto their respective cots.

When Damar’s snores can be heard ringing in the cavernous cellar, Kira turns onto her side and whispers, “Garak?”

Intrigued, Garak lifts himself up onto an elbow. “Yes?”

“Thank you.”

They have a silent exchange of mutually understood pain, before Garak lowers himself back down onto his cot.

“Any time, Colonel.”


End file.
